Remote monitoring and management (RMM) and professional service automation (PSA) platforms are critical for MSP efficiency and, by extension, profitability. These platforms and tools help per-client costs, ensuring profitability and paving the way for growth.
For true managed service providers—those offering services like storage and backup, patch management and managed security, rather than simply provisioning software licenses—RMM and PSA integrations are key to operations. When endpoints are managed in the hundreds or even thousands, automation is key to healthy margins.
Integrations should be created with MSPs in and mind and designed to help them create the most efficient, effective, and profitable business model possible.
At the very least, MSPs should demand their RMM and PSA security integrations:
- Enable faster rollouts- RMM-assisted deployments, at their most effective, are typically faster, smoother, and require far less attention from technicians. We’re talking from connection to protection in a matter of a few clicks.
- Simplify client management- Without efficiency, there’s no profitability for MSPs. So a single-pane-of-glass integrations displaying what’s working, what’s broken and how, infection statuses, and endpoints in need of attention helps boost the volume of endpoints that can be managed by a single technician, meaning your resources stretch farther.
- Serve up actionable data- RMM and PSA integrations provide the data needed to make smart business decisions. Whether it’s calculating a client’s cost to you, information on policy settings for sites and endpoints, or additional reporting you’re able to generate as a value-add (and teaching tool) for clients.
Ask More from Your Integrations
Ensuring a group of stand-alone products communicate effectively with one another can be time-consuming. Almost as time-consuming as when they don’t. For that reason, security vendors are often hesitant to collaborate too closely with clients to automate functions unique to their businesses models. But it can be done with the right partner.
Advanced plugins and tools allow for huge degrees of dashboard customization, branded reporting, and data analysis for the efficient tracking of the metrics most useful to each organization. Critical, recurring tasks, like periodic reports, can be fully automated from creation to delivery. This is extremely helpful for communicating with customers. Weekly or monthly reports reinforce that, though all may seem quiet on the cybersecurity front, threats are constantly being turned away in the background.
More than simply allowing for communication between business platforms, integration plugins should be capable of running commands and performing actions, including eliminating duplicate endpoints, creating new console sites, or the creation, modification, or deletion of licenses.
Ask the Right Integration Questions
So, when it comes time to consider what a security vendor can offer your MSP, consider both whether the solution allows you to communicate with your RMM and PSA platforms, and also how deeply. Will you have access to an integrations team staffed by specialists? Are business-specific reporting options available? Can these be customized? Will essential, recurring processes be able to be automated?
The answers to these questions should assist in determining the value RMM and PSA integrations would bring to your business. When margins can are thin and efficiencies can make the difference between growing or stagnating, integrations may make all the difference.
If you’d like to see how customization and integration can affect your bottom line, start a free, no-obligation trial of Webroot Business Endpoint Protection today.
Guest blog courtesy of Webroot. Read more Webroot blogs here.
